More than half of settled refugee families in Canada owned their own home in 2016 but their rates lag Canadian-born families.
A new analysis from Statistics Canada shows that 50% of settled refugees in Vancouver and 59% of those in Toronto were homeowners according to 2016 Census of Population data. For Canadian-born families 61% of those in Vancouver and 65% in Toronto owned their own home.
These gaps are almost entirely explained by income differences.
Properties owned by refugees tend to have lower assessed values than those owned by Canadian-born families.
For single-detached properties, those owned by resettled refugees in Vancouver have an average assessment value of $1.28 million, 15% less than the corresponding average among Canadian-born residents (a difference of $228,800). For condos, the gap is 17%.
Meanwhile, in Toronto the average value of single-detached properties owned by resettled refugees ($768,800) is about 10% lower than the value of single-detached properties owned by Canadian-born residents. There’s a 22% gap for condos.
These differences can be explained by the age, size, and location of properties and by characteristics of owners.
For example, when income and age of owners is factored in, the gap between Canadian- and refugee-owned single-detached houses in Vancouver declined from $228,800 to $54,000; and in Toronto, the corresponding gap for single detached houses fell from $80,400 to $21,600.
